I know that the “Gospel of Philip does not have much if any real historical veracity to it about Jesus’ life, but does the references about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being lovers and the holes in the papyrus ‘kissing’ verse (verses 32 and 55 in your “Lost Scriptures” book), help support the view that this most likely Gnostic Christian sect truly believed and taught that Jesus and Mary M were married?

RESPONSE:

Yes, this is one of those questions I get asked about on occasion. I have a reasonably full discussion of the relevant issues in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. In the book I put the discussion in the context of – yes, you guessed it — Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the one source many people turn to for the Gospel of Philip. (!) Here’s what I say there:

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Some of the historical claims about the non-canonical Gospels in the Da Vinci Code have struck scholars as outrageous, or at least outrageously funny. The book claims, for example, that some of these Gospels were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. That of course is completely wrong: the Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain any Gospels, or any Christian writings of any sort. They are Jewish texts, which never mention Jesus or any of his followers. And the novel claims that Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene is frequently reported in the Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament. On the contrary, not only is their marriage not reported frequently, it is never reported at all, in any surviving Gospel, canonical or non-canonical. I’ll have more to say about this in a later chapter. For now I want to consider the Gospel of Philip, which is the Da Vinci Code’s star witness for the case that Jesus and were husband and wife.

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Comments

One of your many great books on the history of the Christian faith is Lost Christianities an the Corruption of The Text. I always wondered how could there be so many discrepancies for a figure like Jesus so early? If the gnostics were so off center in their take on Jesus why did the orthodox church fear them so much to attempt to silence and destroy them? Furthermore, in light of the fact that modern science, archaeology and history has questioned the fundamentalist narrative about Jesus and Christian orgins, the Gnostic perspective offers a fresh way to read these canonical gospel and the bible in general as allegories, mythologies and symbols of man’s imagination. Just as we do other literature such as Homer’s Oddessy. We use it to explore our deepest thoughts and wishes. It just seems to me that the Gnostic writings relevant more today to help us move beyond religious dogmatism of the past to spiritual exploration of ideas for now and the future.

My own view is that the Gnostic materials are historically very interesting to show the wide diversity of Christian thought and belief. But also, I find them extremely difficult to understand. Reading them is not easy! Let alone figuring out what they mean…. (Whether classic Sethian texts like the Apocryphon of John or Valentinian texts like the Gospel of Philip, etc….)

What I find interesting about that is how so many flavors of Christianity could have arisen in such a relatively short period of time although from what I understand a lot of these Gnostic versions had roots in earlier beliefs so maybe it wasn’t exactly creating a religion out of whole cloth.

Do scholars think that gnostic movements existed before Jesus’ ministry, thought his message was compelling and grafted it into their thinking? Or, did gnosticism appear on the scene as a brand new Christian movement?

It’s been a subject of long-standing debate. My view is that a gnostic-like view was around before or during the days of Jesus (though not, of course, in Palestine) and that it came to be crystalized into what we now think of as Gnosticism after the Christian element was grafted into it; but its origins probably lie in some kinds of religious mysticism influenced heavily by Platonic thought.

“There were three who always walked with the lord: Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.”

Is there a typo here, or a real contradiction in the ancient manuscript? First, the three are said to include Jesus’s mother, *her* sister, and Mary Magdalene; but in the next sentence it’s Jesus’s mother and *his* sister, plus Mary Magdalene. The second sentence is more plausible, since it’s hard to understand how two sisters could both be named Mary (unless they were really stepsisters).

Dr. E, as I see it there were 2 possible reasons why Jesus was not married: a) not enough women to go around, or b) his apocalyptic thinking since marriage would be unnecessary in the new age. However, Jesus is usually portrayed as being baptized by John around age 30, well past the usual marrying age in that day. Was he an apocalypticist even before meeting John? If not, seems to me that reason (a) is more plausible than reason (b).

Not related to this post, but…I remember someone asking recently whether *women* were ever crucified. I was just reading the Wikipedia article on crucifixion, and saw this:

Apparently the most ancient image of a Roman crucifixion is a graffito found in a taberna (hostel for wayfarers) in Puteoli, dating to the time of Trajan or Hadrian. The cross is the T shape. An inscription over the individual’s left shoulder identifies her as “Alkimila.”

Sorry to interject here, but the comment about crucifixion made me curious so I checked the journal with the reference and in the same issue there’s a short article talking about your views on Mark 1:41. I thought it a bit funny that someone talking about your views popped up in that same issue.

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